3. Will the Minister make a statement on fire safety in high-rise flats in Cardiff? OQ56782

I issued a written statement earlier today that sets out the first phase of the Welsh building safety fund, providing grant funding for surveys. Every building is different and the fire safety survey will identify measures and actions required to make blocks of flats safe in the event of a fire.

Diolch yn fawr, Weinidog. I was very pleased to see the statement earlier on. I know this is a matter that I and others across the parties have raised on several occasions this term. This is because we—as I'm sure that you do, also—receive on a daily basis contact from people who are trapped in their homes. This has had serious impacts on their finance and health. And I note from previous responses from you and from the Trefnydd that you are working on this, but as you appreciate, what residents specifically need is the detail about any financial and any remediation support from Welsh Government. There is a demonstration in Cardiff this Saturday to highlight their plight; can they receive any more answers before Saturday? Diolch.

Well, as I say, I put the statement out earlier today and, just to be clear, what that says is that there's no one-size-fits-all solution—all Members of the Senedd will have heard me saying this before. So, each block of flats will need a bespoke solution for their particular issues, and they're very different depending on how the flats were constructed, when they were constructed and the materials and all the rest of it. So, this isn't just about cladding, this is about a whole series of things, including compartmentalisation, fire escape issues, fire systems, the stuff that holds the cladding on the wall; there's a whole range of these things. And so, what we're doing is we're funding each building to get a survey done that will produce a building passport, which will tell us exactly what the state of the building is, and off which we can then do the next phase, which is to figure out how we're going to sort it out.

I will say that I have now written to Robert Jenrick a very large number of times and I'm very disappointed indeed to say that we have still not heard anything at all about the consequential, as a result of his announcements, for Wales. So, if any Member of the Senedd wants to join with me in calling on the UK Government to tell us at a very early stage—I mean, why has it taken this long—so that we know how much money will be available, that would be very helpful. But nevertheless, despite the fact that we don't know that, we are forging ahead with what we can do, trying to put the systems in place so that once we get the guaranteed funding from the UK Government, we can do something with it.

I will say at this point, Llywydd, that, obviously, consequentials that come to the Welsh Government are not automatically spent on the thing that made the consequential arise in the first place, so I am not saying anything at all about usurping a budget process, but I need to be put into a position, as the Minister responsible, to be able to make bids against budgets and I cannot do that until I know the consequential is coming. So, I appeal, really, to Members of the Senedd to get the UK Government to understand that they need to tell us where the funding is coming from because, otherwise, we are constantly stuck in this situation.

I hear what you say, Minister. Obviously, the first batch of consequentials did not get spent and it's the right of the Welsh Government to spend it as they see fit, but it didn't get spent in the same way that it was spent by the UK Government in England on remediation work. The statement that you issued actually came out at 1.30 p.m. just as we were coming into this Chamber for question time. I haven't had the pleasure of reading that statement yet, so the question I ask you might be contained in that statement, but I hope that you can appreciate the lateness of the statement coming out just before questions.

You replied to me in a written question that your officials were working on a plan or a programme of support that might be made available and that you were hoping to make an announcement shortly. Does that plan involve any capital expenditure that might be made available to home owners, and will all home owners be included in any plan that is coming forward from your department? Obviously, social housing has been included in moneys made available by Welsh Government so far for remediation work, but private home owners have not received any support at all from Welsh Government. So, will any plan that comes from Welsh Government include all home owners that are affected by this terrible, terrible position they find themselves in?

Absolutely, Andrew R.T. Davies, and I understand the written statement came out; sorry, these things are very complicated and I wish we could go faster. The speed is no indication of the priority; it's an indication of the complexity of being able to get these things right, as I've emphasised. I've been meeting, myself, as you know, with a number of residents associations and so on, trying to understand what each individual building is experiencing.

So, what we've done today is we've announced that we will fund the work necessary to find out what is wrong with each building, including the invasive procedures necessary to find exactly what's happening. We will fund that for the buildings so that they will have a building passport that tells them what the issues are, off the back of which we can design the system that allows us to fund the remediation works.

I can't answer the rest of your questions in detail, I'm afraid, because of the issue with these consequentials. I, frankly, just do not have any clue what the budget might look like. So, I will tell you that I am making budget bids inside the Welsh Government for the money that we may or may not have available, but the truth is that without the consequentials we will not have the money necessary to do all of the work in the way that we would like. So, I'm doing the best that I can in the circumstances, but why on earth it's taking this long to tell the Welsh Government what the consequential funding as a result of Robert Jenrick's announcements of several billion pounds earlier in the year will be, I do not know. If you can use your good offices to find out, I'd be very grateful.

It's my ambition that home owners—leaseholders, mostly—should not have to pay for things that are not their fault. But, until I understand the nature and the extent of the damage that there is, and how much money that is, it's impossible for me to promise that.

Thank you for your statement, which I've briefly scanned. Some of my questions you've answered already. I'd just like to ask about the moral hazard of developers being able to walk away from their defective buildings, because, obviously, the Grenfell disaster exposed the regulatory failure to stop people putting firelighters on high-rise buildings. 

If, and when, you get to have a discussion with Robert Jenrick, will this be a topic of conversation? It seems to me that just as landlords have responsibilities around the fire safety of buildings, so do developers in ensuring that these places are safe to live in, as well as local authorities ensuring that they meet the latest standards. So, I just wondered whether you could say a little bit about how you think your meeting with developers that you plan to have later in the year is going to ensure that all developers are acting responsibly, in line with their obligations.

Well, the bottom line, Jenny, is that we absolutely have no way to make sure that they're acting in line with their moral obligations; there's no legal method by which the Welsh Government can do that. As you know, I've asked all of the developers who are involved in the high-rises in Wales to meet with me. To be fair, a number of them have, and a number of them have put some money into rectification of some of the defects in some of the buildings.

Some of the developers haven't met me at all. I've put a final call out for people to meet me, and we're going to have a round-table of those who are happy to work with us in the autumn. At that point, I have asked for advice on whether I can name and shame the ones that will not come forward, so I'm in the process of getting that advice.

But, the legal complexities here are immense. Almost all of these buildings were built by what are called SPVs—special purpose vehicles. They're not the holding company—the name on the top. They're a special purpose vehicle formed for the purpose of building the building, which is then dissolved. So, actually, there is no corporate entity that you can hold legally responsible.

The UK Government, to be fair, has proposed to extend the limitation period—it hasn't done it yet; it's in the legislation currently going through Parliament—to 15 years from six, which will certainly help. Unfortunately, here in Wales, nearly all of the buildings that are here in Cardiff Bay and in Swansea, which are the two big cities most affected, were built, actually, around the millennium, which those of us who are a little older will be amazed to discover is 21 years ago and not 15 years ago—it seems like last Tuesday to some of us.

Unfortunately, that will not help those buildings, because they are going to be outside the period anyway, so that's an issue. We have asked for that to be extended to 25 years, but the UK Government has gone for 15, for various reasons. The 15 years only kicks in when the Bill is passed and it is not yet passed, so some buildings that might fit in now will not fit in by the time the Bill goes through. In addition, even if they do fit inside the limitation period, they still have to find the corporate entity that's responsible, and if they were built by an SPV, that would be very difficult. So, there's no silver bullet for this.

To be fair to some of the developers, they have put substantial sums of money into rectifying some of the buildings, but it has to be said that not all of them are in that position. We continue to work with the developers to try and put as much pressure on them as we can to do that. We've sought advice about what other levers we can use in terms of Welsh Government money, funding and so on, to try and bring them to the table.